Welcome to a new week, friends. Are you ready for it? I would say this past week was uneventful yet productive. Got a lot done—both workwise and around the house—and that’s always a good feeling, but nothing major going on, really. Hasn’t that been the story for the past three months, though. 😉
Had some nice walks with my mom most mornings of the week. We’ve been at this new habit for the past few weeks, and it feels good to get out and begin our day that way. We’re up to 2.2 miles daily. A pretty good start. We even met a little “friend” along our walk one day. (bottom left)
My lovely peonies (bottom middle) got busted down by some storms we had mid-week so I had to cut them off and bring them inside (that’s an oversized coffee mug for the vase, by the way.) 😉 Enjoyed having those on display for a few days. They come and go so fast every season, but I just love them so much.
One thing that is really cool to look at but not so cool for allergies is the fluff falling from the cottonwood trees. (bottom right) There was so much of it coming down that it almost looked like snow falling around me. Had to stop and take a quick picture of it settled along the sidewalk like a fluffy white border.
Our Saturday was spent removing our old mattress and cleaning up all the dust bunnies that had collected underneath (yuck!) in preparation for our new “mattress in a box.” Have any of you ever had experience with one of these? I did a bunch of research ahead of time on companies that offer their mattresses this way, and I was a little worried about ordering a mattress that we didn’t try out first. But in the end, we went with Brooklyn Bedding, and it is AWESOME! (top right) We ordered their medium firmness option in the signature hybrid, which has these little tiny pocket coils along with memory foam and all sorts of layers of comfort goodness. Plus, it was super fun to unroll it, break the plastic open, and watch it expand from its flattened, vacuum sealed form to its normal size. 🙂
Is it weird that I’m so happy about a mattress? It was way past time for a replacement, and my hubby (who was having back issues from the old mattress) is already sleeping better and waking up less achy. Yay!
This week, I have another FREEBIE for you. The first TWO BOOKS in my Cornerstone Series are FREE through Friday, June 19th. These two books go together and should be read in order as Hello, Forever is the sequel to Goodbye, Magnolia, picking up with Maggie and Simon from the end of the first book.
Well, it’s another Monday, friends! How was your weekend? Did you do anything fun?
Our weekend can be described in one word. House project. 🙂
Jake took Friday off, and we went to Menards to get the supplies for him to build himself a new, bigger work bench/desk. We made it a little date and went to Culver’s for lunch and ate in the truck. On the way there, I realized that this was the first time I would be going into a store since March. Jake has been our “grocery getter” this whole time, and the only place I’ve been to is the post office and the gas station. This is also the first “date” (other than walks around our neighborhood and date night on the couch watching TV or a movie) that we’ve been on in months. It was nice to get out together.
And just so you get the full picture because I always like reading about people’s real life and not the rosy picture so often portrayed on the internet … high 80s outside, no air conditioning in the truck, masks on in a very warm Menards that made it hard to breathe, frustrations over not being able to find the things we needed, snapping at each other more than once. 😉
But we had nice moments too—the nice breeze with the open windows while we drove, a musician playing guitar across the parking lot at Culver’s while we shared a meal, being able to talk without the kids around.
Saturday and Sunday were ALL about the house project. Jake built his desk while the rest of us played “musical desks” 🙂 and moved Jake’s desk to Z’s room, Z’s desk to my room, and Jake’s new desk into his space.
We live in a small house, so it’s a challenge when we do these kinds of projects to find space to stack stuff. Our dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday had to be takeout because we couldn’t get to the cupboards or kitchen appliances because of all the piles. And I was 100% OK with that because our local Chinese buffet FINALLY reopened for takeout. Ever since everything shut down, they have been closed, and I’ve craved Chinese food more than once in the past 80+ days. And I have to say, it tasted so good. It was well worth the wait. And today … leftovers! 😉
Last week was filled with lots of walking with my mom and Jake, while soaking ourselves in bug spray because the mosquitoes are awful right now. Ugh. We were also able to return to C’s school and clean out her locker finally. Was a very strange end to the school year, that’s for sure.
I also spent a little time writing on Skylar’s first draft (More Than a Billionaire) and thinking about a novella I want to write this year as well while also putting together a few FREEBIES for the upcoming weeks.
This week’s FREEBIE is BITTERSWEET, my novel from the Second Chance with You series. It will be FREE through Tuesday, June 9th.
I’m so excited you’ve found me here in my little corner of the web. The MY BOOKS tab above will take you to my online shop, where you can learn about and purchase all of my novels. If you aren’t already subscribed to my NEWSLETTER, join along to be among the first to be notified of new releases, cover reveals, behind-the-scenes, etc. And there might just be some free stuff for subscribers as well. 😉
I woke on Saturday morning and sat outside on the porch, enjoying my morning coffee. The sun was shining, there was a lovely breeze, the birds were chirping. It’s become one of my favorite ways to start my day lately. It fills my soul with peace and I crave that quiet to think and pray and begin my day in a good way rather than jumping right into all the things.
Did you watch the SpaceX launch? As someone who once seriously considered the space program as a future career, anything to do with NASA is exciting to me. And it was definitely exciting and emotional and thrilling to watch history happen – the first manned space launch by NASA in nearly a decade! Yes!
I finally started the 20/20 Bible Study by Christine Caine. My mom got me the study book for Christmas and Lifeway has videos that go along with it online. I was first introduced to her last fall when I attended a Propel Women’s Conference at my BFF’s church. God has definitely given her a gift of sharing His word with women. Listening to her is always very moving. Plus, she’s got that great Australian accent that’s fun to listen to. 🙂
I ended up on the couch in the evening. I had been sneezing all day and had a runny nose and headache. I thought I was coming down with a cold and drank some OJ, ate chicken noodle soup, and sipped on some ginger tea. But it wasn’t actually a cold. The pollen around here is CRAZY lately, and we figured out that I had allergies going on. I never used to have any problems with pollen, but it’s gotten worse for me the past few years. Ugh!
On Saturday evening, I turned in for the night and happened to see a post on Facebook from a friend about the protests happening in downtown Grand Rapids. I clicked over to our local news and caught live video just after police used tear gas on rioters. There had been a peaceful protest earlier in the night, which later turned violent. Buildings and vehicles burned, windows of local businesses smashed out and looted, graffiti all over the police department. My best friend lives close to downtown, and I immediately sent off a text to make sure she was okay. She was out of town, thankfully.
Sunday morning, the first thing I saw were reports of hundreds of people converging on the city to begin the cleanup, working together. It was a beautiful sight to see.
After watching our church service online, Jake and I went for a nice walk together. It was a gorgeous day, and the wildflowers along our walk were beautiful. I ended up going out to my parents’ farm later in the afternoon and went for another walk with my mom back their lane, and then sat and chatted for a couple hours. Was a nice afternoon with my mama. 🙂
I have a lot of thoughts about all that is going on in our country right now that I am working through, but as soon as I saw this graphic by @ohhappydani on Instagram, I knew it perfectly illustrated what I wanted to say but hadn’t found words for.
Change has to start within each of us, in our own hearts and homes!
Yes, I know it’s actually Tuesday when I’m posting this, but yesterday was the Memorial Day holiday. 😉
When I redid my website a while back, I didn’t transfer over old personal posts about our family or the kids so the site would be focused on writing and my books, and one of my weekly posts on the blog was Hello, Monday, where I shared what we did over the weekend. I thought this would be a fun thing to start up again so my reader friends, like you, can get a glimpse into “real life” for the Noormans. 🙂
I have gotten away from blogging in recent years as I grew more focused on writing my books, and I miss it. A lot. I first began blogging in 2005, and it was my place to share my thoughts and document our life. Somehow, as I’ve become more focused on social media to get the word out about my books, I’ve turned to Facebook to share personal stuff. And that’s okay. But the sad thing about that is Facebook doesn’t show all my posts to everyone who is my friend there, so it’s like more than half who originally clicked to follow me aren’t even seeing anything I share. It gets a little frustrating. Especially since I don’t have the time or energy to try to figure out the best way to get their algorithms to share my posts.
And what I’ve been realizing lately is that no matter what happens with social media apps, no matter how many times they change the app and the algorithms, this blog will always be mine. I write it. I host it. Nobody else controls who sees what I post. So, while some may think blogs are dead, I’m going to get back to my roots and start posting here more.
Oh, I’ll still share plenty over on Facebook, but I’m feeling the need to get back to things I love right now, and one of the things that always made me happy was writing here on my blog.
What we were up to this weekend:
• My best friend, Jen, invited me to go kayaking on the lake where her sister lives. It was perfect weather and just so wonderful to get out of the house and see people. Jen and I have been friends since we were six, and we were reminiscing about another time we were out on that lake together, when we were probably pre-teens and we took a paddle boat (some people call them pedal boats) and had our boom box, listening to “Let’s Hear It For The Boy” while we pedaled past the YMCA camp that is on the lake, where there were a bunch of boys out playing in the water. hehe! Fun memories.
On our kayaking adventure, we saw lots of turtles on the logs along the shoreline. The tiny turtle babies were so cute. I didn’t have my phone with me in the kayak, so I didn’t get any pictures of them.
We had a yummy dinner on the grill – chicken and veggie packs – then sat on the dock and watched her nephew attempt to catch fish. There were so many mayflies out, and the fish were coming up out of the water to get them, which was fun to watch. And I kid you not, there were thousands upon thousands of mayflies. We looked up at the sky above us around sunset time and it was just swarming with them. It was crazy. Cool to see, and they didn’t bother us … much. 😉
• Sunday was a day of rest. Watched church online and had communion (cheez-its and apple juice in place of the cracker and grape juice we would normally have at church). The most exciting thing we did was order a new mattress for our bed. Ours is super old and no longer as supportive as it once was, and it’s causing both of us issues. We went for a mattress-in-a-box. Hopefully, we’ll like it. We’ve heard good things.
• Monday, we traveled across the state to Jake’s parents’ for the day. We sat outside at a distance and caught up, played yard games (in the garage to stay out of the hot sun), and had hot dogs on the grill. We hadn’t seen them since last year as they are snowbirds and only recently came home from Florida. 🙂 So, we were excited to be able to visit. Even if we weren’t able to hug right now, it was still wonderful to see their faces.
On the drive home, we encountered a couple things. Thunderstorms and a drunk driver (we’re pretty sure that’s what was going on with her). I happened to glance in my rear view mirror and saw a big white SUV a ways back from me go from the right lane of the highway into the left lane, only she didn’t merge nicely into the lane, she kept on going off the left edge of the road into the dirt and grass then swerved back suddenly, which of course caused her vehicle to weave back and forth as she tried to gain control. I could tell that the left side of her vehicle had damage to it. We can only assume that was from an earlier collision with something. Maybe a guard rail. Maybe another vehicle. Who knows. I was super nervous about this person being behind me and I was about to pass a semi, so I went ahead and started to pass and just prayed to get around the semi and into the right lane before this person gunned it and rammed me or something. I prayed that if she passed, she would not drift right and hit me. But I didn’t have to worry about that … because while I was passing the semi on the left, as I should, she decided it was okay to pass the semi on the narrow RIGHT SHOULDER of the road … going 80 MPH! What? She went fast enough that she was ahead of us as I finished passing the semi and then she sort of slowed behind another vehicle, and there was NO WAY I was going to attempt to pass. But because she was right in front of us, we got her license plate number and Jake called 911 just before she got off at an exit, which he told the 911 operator. It was craziness. We ended up getting a call back from the area police saying that officers had found her and they wondered if when she swerved off the road if she hit anything, which she did not. They were trying to figure out her path and where the damage to her vehicle might have occurred. We are just very glad that we reported her and got her off the road. It was scary to witness such erratic driving. And who knows what the reason … but one thing was clear … she should not have been on the road.
How about you? How was your weekend? Any fun stories? Feel free to drop them in the comments.
Thanks for stopping by the blog. I hope you’ll come back again soon.
